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And speaking of surprising and unexpected, this weekend was surprisingly and unexpectedly spent sitting fairly still and ingesting copious amounts of drugs, as my shoulders went kablooey on Friday. It wasn’t even because I did too much and then could sit here and alternate between laughing at myself and (hopefully) chanting ‘it was worth it’. Nope, it was due to agreeing to let a resident, rather than my family doctor, practice on me. I believe in teaching the next generation of doctors, but in the future, any teaching that involves me is going to be purely verbal. However! The weekend was not without its highlights.

For a long time, going to Toronto’s Pride Parade was one of my annual rituals. Not only is it a celebration of something in which I believe – equality, tolerance and all that good stuff – it’s the best party of the year and it looks like this year was no different. Haven’t been able to join the fun for a while, but yet another great thing about living downtown, is that elements of Pride are all around you. Like in the window of your local supermarket

Despite on-and-off rain – again! Or is that still? – part of the sitting still was done in the park, listening to a good book. On Saturday, I got distracted from the book by watching a man play with his beautiful dog and at one point, the dog came over to stand next to me with a ball in its mouth. Naturally, I thought he wanted to play and leaned out a little to pet the dog and halfway through the lean, I realized that he wasn’t there to play. Nope. Standing calmly right next to my chair, chewing meditatively on his red ball, he was lifting his leg to pee on my tires. As his person came running towards us, screaming at the dog to stop so ignominiously marking me – sure buddy, good luck with that – I started laughing and couldn’t stop. Apparently, this week is all about pet effluvium for me. It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone apologize so much, but luckily, the dog’s aim was off and he hit the ground exactly between my front and rear tires. Still, the next time I see that dog, I’m running.

I want to thank everyone who entered Friday’s contest for leaving terrific stories about love and kindness. They warmed my heart. And now that I’ve tortured you with delaying the announcement of the winner as long as humanly possible (I learned this technique from watching too many reality shows)…

I didn’t go high tech (too complicated), the cat was supremely uninterested, so I resorted to calling up my mother. There were thirteen comments, so I asked her to pick a number between 1 and 13. She’s brainless due to a severe cold/pneumonia and had no idea what I was talking about, so it was as random as the high tech method. Congratulations, Michelle! Pick a photo from my Flickr page and email me at landers5ATgmailDOTcom with your address.